OT: Does anyone know a good free anti-spyware/adware program?

[Condottiere]

Get pop up blocker, popus if u click on them contain spyware and u will be infected without knowing, but I recomned you get programs like Norton anti virus that come equiped with ad blocking and spyware prevention.

I already have Norton 2004 Professional Edition as well as ZoneAlarm. Do you know of a way of closing pop-ups without having to click on the "close" symbol? I heard somewhere - may not be true - that clicking on the "x" can sometimes install programs on one's machine.

[Condottiere]

I believe I've finally rid myself of the MySearch/My Way - the thing is I don't know how it actually worked. I first ran Spyware Doctor and when it finished scanning, Spy Sweeper. Both detected a number of cookies, but no spyware. I then decided to run Spybot-S&D and Ad-Aware 6.0 simultaneously. For awhile it looked like everything was going to freeze up, but in the end spybot stopped running followed by Adaware. The former didn't find anything significant, but the latter had 3 entries for "My Way". This was strange, because previously this program never found any spyware programs. Now when I go go tripod/lycos sites, I still get the occasional pop-up, but no Searchbar appears on the left of my screen. Could running a number of anti-spware/anti-adware programs as opposed to one at a time, be a better option?

[Phatose]

Well, at the advice of several in this thread, I'm starting using Firefox.
Don't think I'm ever going to go back. This is great. Thanks dudes.

[Ludens]

Thanks, Tomcat. That link explains it.

[Tomcat]

EYG, Ad-Aware SE is free for Personal Use - currently at version 1.05.

It certainly found a few more little nasties when I upgraded to the new product. I am running it on 3 PCs and had no problem ugrading although it does uninstall older versions before installing itself.

Thanks for the tip about "block all pages silently", though I tend to agree with you, it is often a good idea to know where the wretched spyware stuff is coming from.

Tomcat

[Morindin]

I believe I've finally rid myself of the MySearch/My Way - the thing is I don't know how it actually worked. I first ran Spyware Doctor and when it finished scanning, Spy Sweeper. Both detected a number of cookies, but no spyware. I then decided to run Spybot-S&D and Ad-Aware 6.0 simultaneously. For awhile it looked like everything was going to freeze up, but in the end spybot stopped running followed by Adaware. The former didn't find anything significant, but the latter had 3 entries for "My Way". This was strange, because previously this program never found any spyware programs. Now when I go go tripod/lycos sites, I still get the occasional pop-up, but no Searchbar appears on the left of my screen. Could running a number of anti-spware/anti-adware programs as opposed to one at a time, be a better option?

From my experiance - no. Adaware provided it's updated usually finds everything spyware S&D finds + more.

Someone has already mentioned there is a newer version of Adaware available that you should download.

http://www.howtouniverse.com/CI/removehotbar.html

There is a link on that article on removing hotbar, mysearch, and other such nasties.